L. Marcus Posted January 25, 2011 Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 Re: The Last Word I think I'd love to play TORG ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 25, 2011 Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 Re: The Last Word It was fun, though there were some funky bits to it. Designing magic spells was ... complex. Rules for designing pulp-era "super science" devices ... didn't really exist. Psionics were sort of broken in terms of the power creep issue. And it used a flat probability distribution (a d20, but it wasn't a "d20" system game). But it did some things well, and IMO its social interaction rules were better than HERO's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word In the latest Bazza asks potentially stupid science question to Cancer ( ): Is reality holographic ? I am aware of David Bohm's theory, though not in great detail (I do have his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order), and also am aware that there is an independent theory not based on Bohm's. I'm also aware of Karl Pilbrarm (sp) (sp) that the brain/memory has holonomic/holographic characteristics. I am also aware of various Eastern assertions that reality is illusory (Maya) which potentially align with a holographic model of the universe. Any pointers for further research? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word I would have to read up and figure out what is meant by "holographic" in this context. I admit I have read none of the works you refer to (I've heard of them but never chased the writings), and I rather suspect they use that word in a sense that is importantly different from the way I use it (which is a strictly technical way, having to do with image storage via coherent light in sort of a Fourier transform format). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word Late to this, but BSD & AT&T Unix have the same root. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word Late to this' date=' but BSD & AT&T Unix have the same root.[/quote'] Yep, but as I understand it, BSD was legally required to remove the AT&T code, thus we got 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2. Historically, BSD has been considered a branch of UNIX—"BSD UNIX", because it shared the initial codebase and design with the original AT&T UNIX operating system. [...] Today, the term "BSD" is often non-specifically used to refer to any of these BSD descendants, e.g., FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD or DragonFly, which together form a branch of the family of Unix-like operating systems. The exception being Mac OS X which is based on BSD Unix and is certified Unix, hense not 'Unix System-like'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word I think most of the Unix experience I had was with BSD 4.2 back in grad school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word I think I've seen a Unix screen one time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 26, 2011 Report Share Posted January 26, 2011 Re: The Last Word I think most of the Unix experience I had was with BSD 4.2 back in grad school. I've had experience with around 20 different flavors. Most differences are fairly cosmetic, even if you throw Linux into the mix. AIX was the biggest problem to deal with early on, but even it was fairly easy to switch to. Most of the versions had contributions from a bunch of different companies, including Microsoft. And yes, MAX OS-X is still Unix System like. It just happens to also be certified which is a smaller subset. So is AIX. Just means they pass the tests. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I've seen probably eight or so different versions, but most of those were as a pretty casual user-land fortran numbercruncher type. I think far and away my hours with BSD 4.2 still outnumber the sum of all the other versions' hours. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I've seen probably eight or so different versions' date=' but most of those were as a pretty casual user-land fortran numbercruncher type. I think far and away my hours with BSD 4.2 still outnumber the sum of all the other versions' hours.[/quote'] I used to build test labs with mixes of different flavors and versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I've had experience with around 20 different flavors. Most differences are fairly cosmetic, even if you throw Linux into the mix. AIX was the biggest problem to deal with early on, but even it was fairly easy to switch to. Most of the versions had contributions from a bunch of different companies, including Microsoft. And yes, MAX OS-X [sic] is still Unix System like. It just happens to also be certified which is a smaller subset. So is AIX. Just means they pass the tests. That certification process determines who can use the IP around the word "Unix"; you don't have it you cannot be authentic. Simple as that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I used to build test labs with mixes of different flavors and versions. I was much more aware of differences among the fortran compilers and the numeric processing than the OS. I "grew up" doing fortran on a CDC machine with their glorious 60-bit word length. Having to drop back to 32-bit words was a flaming PITA, because it almost but not quite had enough floating-point precision to be useful without having to go to the much, much slower double precision math (so you had to do the arithmetic at least partly in software, not just in the hardware). At the time, they kept track of how much processing time you used and (sometimes literally) billed you for it, so you always hated having to do to double precision because of the d***ed hardware "upgrade" to the smaller-word machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word That certification process determines who can use the IP around the word "Unix"; you don't have it you cannot be authentic. Simple as that Yep. Let's you find most of the config stuff fairly easy and makes the marketing department happy. Other than that, no big deal. There are non-certified that are pretty close. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I was much more aware of differences among the fortran compilers and the numeric processing than the OS. I "grew up" doing fortran on a CDC machine with their glorious 60-bit word length. Having to drop back to 32-bit words was a flaming PITA' date=' because it almost but not quite had enough floating-point precision to be useful without having to go to the much, much slower double precision math (so you had to do the arithmetic at least partly in software, not just in the hardware). At the time, they kept track of how much processing time you used and (sometimes literally) billed you for it, so you always hated having to do to double precision because of the d***ed hardware "upgrade" to the smaller-word machines.[/quote'] Another job of mine consisted of pouring thru code to look for gotchas in 32-bit -> 64-bit Solaris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word "You're not supposed to know that already!" Uplifting words from my resident. ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 27, 2011 Report Share Posted January 27, 2011 Re: The Last Word I do remember the first time I stumbled over what I think of as the 32-bit problem: when I was doing a calculation at grid points ranging from 4290 to 4300 in steps of 0.01 ... and I got 1024 points out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2011 Re: The Last Word Yep. Let's you find most of the config stuff fairly easy and makes the marketing department happy. Other than that' date=' no big deal. There are non-certified that are pretty close.[/quote'] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted January 29, 2011 Report Share Posted January 29, 2011 Re: The Last Word Don't get hung up on scraps of paper, that's all. Standards are good, but nothing to get too excited about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 30, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2011 Re: The Last Word Don't get hung up on scraps of paper' date=' that's all. Standards are good, but nothing to get too excited about.[/quote'] I was getting hung up by the IP and the (I'm sure) lawyers who would defend it. And yeah, from a technical point, ther isn't a lot of difference between FreeBSD and Mac OS X, one just paid the certification fee and passed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 30, 2011 Report Share Posted January 30, 2011 Re: The Last Word Infamous Vampire Desserts #85: Sudae Bloody Sundae. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted January 30, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2011 Re: The Last Word Just a little heads-up that I'll be reducing my Board-time the next few days, until the last part of my move is done and I get an Internet hook-up. I will have access from the hospital, but I think I will be a bit preoccupied there. ^^ See ya. Medicine stopped Cancer, who knew Guess, I've have to step into LM's role and be a slave to Cancer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 31, 2011 Report Share Posted January 31, 2011 Re: The Last Word Wha-Pish! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 31, 2011 Report Share Posted January 31, 2011 Re: The Last Word Here in the US, having a slave isn't worth it. Lots of wage slaves, sure. But real slaves, no. That gets the Feds involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted February 1, 2011 Report Share Posted February 1, 2011 Re: The Last Word Peons better than thralls. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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